Screen Time: Five-ish Movies to See With Your Kids in October

By Jesse Hassenger

Screen Time is a monthly listing of repertory film screenings in Brooklyn with movies your kids will love (or learn to). 

One of the most important things to understand as a parent—at least within the realm of the great screen time conundrum that is now able to plague anyone with a child between the ages of six months and, I assume, young adulthood—is that all screens are not created equal.

Fortunately, this dovetails perfectly with the time-honored New York tradition of celebrating our hard-won living conditions by escaping them whenever possible to watch stuff somewhere else. In other words, watching streaming in your apartment: sad, passive, symptom of late capitalism. Watching a movie on a big screen owned and operated by someone else: joyous, communal, mind-expanding cultural activity. And it is important to, at least occasionally, exercise this option with your children so that they might associate screens with something more expansive than Roblox.

The practice of taking kids to the movies does not require a fealty to whatever kid-skewing movies Hollywood sees fit to wide-release (or, in some months, not release). And, to our great fortune, the many movie theaters in this borough and beyond it make some manner of early cinematic education genuinely accessible, even if it eventually becomes an excuse to eat popcorn and candy as they get older.

This big-screen experience—its sheer atmosphere and level of visible detail putting even nicer home-viewing systems to shame—feels especially crucial during Spooky Season, even if you’re not raising a horror kid; maybe even if you cringe when people say “spooky season.” So October felt like the right time to start this exercise we’re calling Screen Time, for which I’ve selected five—no, six!—repertory lineup offerings that could expand your movie-friendly child’s horizons in a number of directions (not all of them toward the veil). I’ve also included age recommendations, though of course you know your child and what they can handle better than I do.

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Suggested ages: 10+
October 1, 6 p.m. at The Metrograph

Before October really accelerates into full-on spooky mode, why not catch a summer palate cleanser to match what will presumably be approximately eight days of autumn weather between summer swelter and brutal winter? The Odyssey was a summer smash, and adventurous kids who checked out Christopher Nolan’s thoughtful, spectacular take on Homer might appreciate a cheekier variation courtesy of Joel and Ethan Coen. The Coens’ comedies are generally the best bet for introducing kids to their whole deal, and O Brother is one of the most visually resplendent and, crucially, gleefully shticky. Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) and his quasi-soldiers/fellow convicts Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) don’t stick too closely to the text, which the Coens confess to (joke about?) never having actually read. But it’s still fun to map their gorgeously sepia-toned misadventures onto the more serious version (so long as you’re ready to provide some context for the movie’s gags about the KKK). Also, the comedy of Clooney repeatedly exclaiming “Damn, we’re in a tight spot!” plays better on movie-theater speakers. It’s bona fide.

Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Monster House (2006)

Suggested ages: 7+
October 3 and 4, 11 a.m. at Nitehawk Williamsburg

Like superhero movies, the Spielberg-related kid-friendly adventure is a sub-genre that makes way more sense when it’s mostly made for actual children, rather than nostalgic or arrested-adolescent adults. That’s what makes Monster House notable as, essentially, a cross between a suburban kids-on-bikes story, with a trio of pre-teens investigating mysterious goings-on in their neighborhood, and a spooky Halloween picture book (the antagonist is literally… well, it’s not where Dracula and Wolf Man share lodgings, I’ll say that). For further Spielberg-world cred, Monster House is quietly the best movie made with the mo-cap computer animation that so bewitched Robert Zemeckis throughout the 2000s. Zemeckis exec-produced this one alongside his pal Spielberg. (That credited co-writer Dan Harmon insists his whole point was missed by meddling filmmakers is almost a bonus unto itself.) It’s a perfect elementary-school horror movie: A little scary with a happy ending.

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and The Wolf Man (1940)

Suggested ages: 8+
October 3 (Creature) and October 25 (Wolf Man), 1 p.m. at Museum of the Moving Image

Even if you don’t have a horror kid begging to see the new Resident Evil, you may have a monster kid who feels some kind of automatic empathy for the humanoid misfits beneath old-timey Universal Pictures makeup. There’s a wealth of fun (and short!) monster movies that Universal made from the early 1930s into the late 1950s, though of course the original installments tend to get the most rep-house play. The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Wolf Man aren’t as full-on gothic—or, honestly, classic—as Dracula or the first two Frankenstein movies, but this also makes them more palatable for younger audiences. Creature in particular, which the Museum of the Moving Image is showing in 3D, has both a costumes-and-sets tactility and a monstrous, unknowable empathy that makes it a key piece of monster history.

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Suggested ages: 9+
October 10 and 11, 12 p.m. at Nitehawk Prospect Park

So many kids enter their tweens already instinctively understanding and liking musicals based on the Disney movies that inevitably help define their early viewing habit, but feel the need to liberate themselves from that Disneyfied childhood by later rejecting the musical form (though obviously some New Yorkers will find an easy path toward theater-kid territory). It doesn’t help that so many live-action cinematic musicals are so regrettably clunky as entertainment, often poorly adapted from a Broadway version that city kids especially might well know already. Little Shop of Horrors, in fact, is currently playing Off Broadway, but if you’re budget-conscious, gun-shy about the musical’s grim ending, or a devoted Rick Moranis fan (all fine things to be), Frank Oz’s movie version of the tongue-in-cheek carnivorous-plant musical is playing at the Nitehawk this October. It’s arguably the best movie musical of the 1980s, and Oz’s film (with, as the director himself has pointed out, the ability to feature the actors in close-up), automatically makes for a slightly more sincere experience without sacrificing any of its black-comic charm. In addition to Moranis, ‘80s comedy mainstays Steve Martin, John Candy, and Bill Murray all appear, and Ellen Greene is a powerhouse as the beloved maybe-girlfriend of a meek florist whose unusual (alien) plant brings him unlikely fame and fortune.

Courtesy of RKO Radio Pictures

Cat People (1942)

Suggested ages: 10+
October 31 and November 1, 11:15 a.m. at Nitehawk Williamsburg

This is the one I’m hoping to take my daughter to see this month, and crossing my fingers that a movie where most of the characters are humans, rather than mutant human-cat hybrids, won’t disappoint this author of Warrior Cats fan-fic. Granted, it’s probably a certain kind of cat obsessive who will be transfixed by an eerie story of a woman (Simone Simon) who fears she will transform into a fearsome panther if her passions are inflamed by her husband (Kent Smith) or by his blossoming relationship with another woman (It’s still governed by the pre-MPAA Production Code, after all.) But the movie has a beautifully dreamlike quality courtesy of director Jacques Tourneur, and could work well as a means of testing the water for a supernatural-curious child.